The workshops, which are hosted at the company’s PackRight Centers in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Lebanon, Indiana, bring DS Smith’s designers and engineers together with customers to develop design solutions that boost packaging efficiency, effectiveness, appeal and sustainability. The new workshops are the first in the U.S. packaging and design space to employ advanced visual content platform solutions from leading French collaboration tech start-up Klaxoon.
By combining creativity, strategic insights, and cutting-edge technology to streamline the design process, these collaborative sessions reduce the time, effort and expense required to create new packaging that addresses brands’ growing circularity needs.
“Our PackRight Centers integrate circularity with design, improving the process needed to bring inspiration from the drawing board to the factory floor,” said Steven Rose, Managing Director, Packaging, DS Smith North America. “No longer just for in person collaboration, our new PackRight design workshops enable all customers interested in reducing their environmental impact to take advantage of DS Smith’s design and engineering expertise and our proven Circular Design Metrics process.”
How it works: Developing insights for circular solutions
Initial Audit: DS Smith’s new PackRight offering begins with an initial site visit and an audit of a customer’s present packaging supply chain. This supply chain audit provides essential insights for the path of innovation required for a redesign that can boost the value, efficiency and sustainability of a customer’s packaging.
Collaboration and Brainstorming: Following the audit, DS Smith PackRight Center specialists conduct a workshop using digital collaboration tools to enhance brainstorming and teamwork between DS Smith and client teams. The platform combines whiteboard and videoconferencing features, allowing session leaders to drive interactive sessions with live questions, voting, word clouds, and additional tools to capture and report participant feedback.
Rating and Comparing Circularity: During the Circular Design Metrics analysis in PackRight workshops, DS Smith’s designers and engineers help brands rate and compare the circularity of packaging designs across eight indicators: carbon footprint, design for reuse, supply chain optimization, recyclability, planet safety, material utilization, renewable source and recycled content.
Rapid Prototyping and Review: Workshop leaders create rapid prototypes on demand using the PackRight Centers’ digital printing and cutting equipment, and then evaluate the performance of those prototypes on in-house testing equipment. High-end cameras quickly and accurately capture print samples for collaborative review and analysis. A proprietary DS Smith Value Tool analysis helps to quantify the benefits customers gain by calculating the total cost of ownership for packaging designs.
With this process, DS Smith’s PackRight Centers help brands develop innovative and sustainable packaging designs. The result is more effective, circular packaging solutions that improve supply cycle effectiveness, increase sales, and manage risk.
Recently, the new workshops helped a virtual team from a South American food brand establish new sustainability targets. DS Smith has also used the new PackRight workshops while collaborating with a leading equipment manufacturer on enhancements to fiber-based beverage packaging solutions.
